STILL SEARCHING FOR JOBS

WASHINGTON, DC – House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) today released the following statement in response to the new national unemployment numbers announced this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

“The unemployment numbers released earlier this morning are little comfort to the 3.2 million Americans who have lost their jobs under this President’s stewardship. Nor will it cheer the 2 million unemployed persons who have been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, or the 462,000 discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job because there are none available.

“It’s encouraging that after three hard years, the economy is slowly starting to right itself. But we could – and should – have enacted a growth plan that did not explode the deficit and debt. The record deficits caused by the President’s economic plan puts the long-term health of our economy at risk and crowds out opportunities to invest in education and health care for Americans.

“And because the working-age population is increasing every month, the economy has to create at least 130,000 jobs each month just to keep pace. Americans need a job market that’s striding forward, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs – not plodding slowly and unsteadily.

"President Bush and Republicans in Congress promised that the economy would gain 306,000 new jobs each month once the tax package was passed – a promise that has proved to be empty. Nine million people are out of work, and another five million scrape by on part-time work because they can't find full time jobs. Wages and incomes are down, and the hard-hit manufacturing industry continues to slash jobs – 24,000 in October alone.

“Even two months of small job gains in September and October only make up for 8% of the job loss that has taken place since President Bush took office. Barring an economic miracle, this president will finish his term with a negative job creation record, the first since the Great Depression. That’s a sorry standard for this nation.”